Bubble Tea!

BF took me out for lunch today, so I didn't make bentos. So I thought instead I would show you something that arrived earlier this week...a bubble tea kit!!!

I first got hooked on bubble tea when I lived in Ontario, and since I got back to Nova Scotia, the only place I could find it was a little Vietnamese restaurant downtown. But since I didn't want to buy dinner every time I wanted bubble tea, I decided to try to make it at home. The kit is from this ebay seller.

For those who aren't familiar, bubble tea is a milky green tea drink that is usually flavoured. You drink it with a wide straw because it has large balls of tapioca at the bottom. I think the idea is that that the tapioca gives you something to chew on between sips.

The kit included four bags of flavoured powder (green apple, papaya and two of red bean), three bags of tapioca (two black and one rainbow) and a big bag of large straws.

It took me about three tries to get the recipe right, so here it is. For two glasses of bubble tea you boil three heaping tablespoons of tapioca balls with a couple tablespoons of brown sugar for fifteen minutes. In each glass, put two generous teaspoons of flavour powder and two of sugar. Fill the glass half way with green tea and stir until the powders are dissolved. Fill the rest of the glass with milk (skim or 1% is best because it's already pretty heavy). Add half the tapioca balls to each glass and then add some ice cubes and a wide straw.

I think most places use powdered milk, and then fill the glass with green tea, but I'd rather use real milk because powdered milk creeps me out a little and this tastes the same.

And that's how you make delicious bubble tea! I have enough stuff here to make about 60 or 70 glasses so hopefully that will last me a while.